WHAT DO WE NEED?
HOW TO HELP US?
HOW CAN WE HELP OURSELVES?

Yes, we start with this - we ask for money for our own children, and for other children in the Department. We do it using personal contacts, as well as via press and TV. We hope for understanding: people should understand that such a trouble can come to any family. Oncology and children's diseases are two main directions of charity activity worldwide. In our situation both these directions were brought together: children with oncology.

Nevertheless, such requests for help are not always heard and help does not always come on time...
 

How to help our children?

= You can get medicines for them or send us money for their purchase. You can do it for the whole Department - the information on what we need urgently can be found in the news section or in the list of annual needs of the Department. You can also do it for a concrete child - you will find the information in requests for help. Please make use of our contact details and bank account information to contact us or to transfer money to the bank account.

= Please help us to find those who would help us with medicines or money. Become our volunteer: tell others about us, help us to get in touch with possible sponsors. If you have got a web-site - please mention us, or place our button or a banner. Or maybe you could write an article about us and our children in a newspaper or a magazine that you cooperate with.

= Perhaps, you do not have now an opportunity to help ill children with money, but you are ready to do any other work for them? Or maybe you would like to take advantage of our services, so that the payment is spent on treatment of the children with leukaemia? We have borrowed this idea from Andrey Ilyichev, a muscovite, who until recently has been running a web-site "Call of Mercy". Please, read our offer.

Here it has been done a lot already.

= We cooperate with the largest Russian societies assisting children with oncological diseases: an organization from Moscow called Group of Mercy named after padre Alexander Men and "Deton" from St.-Petersburg. In May 2001 a representative of the Parents' Initiative participated in the 5th French-Russian seminar on problems of help to seriously ill children, organized by the Moscow group.

= We are currently trying to consolidate the efforts of parental and volunteer groups at children's haematology departments of the Ukraine - unfortunately, there are very few of them.

= For two years we have been corresponding with and receiving materials from the meetings of the International Confederation of Childhood Cancer Parent Organizations (ICCCPO). Unfortunately, at present we do not have a financial opportunity to take part in their annual meetings (in 2001 the meeting will take place in Luxembourg.)

= In spring 1999 we established contact with the participants of the Crimean permanent symposium "Man and Christian Philosophy" - and the contact has already brought some tangible results.

We need to expand such connections and cooperation: through personal meetings and participation in various conferences and seminars, through the Internet and using any other ways.
 

How to help our children?

= We shall be grateful for financing the trip to annual meetings of ICCCPO - the costs spared at contacts at such level are usually repaid a hundredfold.

This has become realistically possible for us only now when we have got access to the Internet and we have our own page in the Network in Russian and English languages. Unfortunately, the language barrier prevents us very much from establishing medical contacts: at the moment we do not have a person who can speak good English and who is ready to work with us on a permanent basis.

Our purpose is to find an opportunity to perform BMT operations in foreign clinics upon 2-3 Crimean children each year.
 

How to help our children?

= You can help us with accommodating and supporting the family of the child, who will be undergoing treatment in a foreign clinic. If you live in this country - invite them to stay with you or find an inexpensive way to accommodate them!

Even if the help has been allocated for us, it does not mean yet that we shall receive it! The customs regulations, which are far from being efficient and therefore fail now and then, give us unsolvable problems at times. For example, this is what happened last year during the customs clearance of the disposable gadgets for a centrifuge (these gadgets are extremely necessary for the treatment of myeloblast leukaemia). The customs procedure lasted for half a year, and we were about to loose the expensive gadgets. That matter was solved only due to the personal involvement of the chairman of Council of Ministers of the autonomous Republic of the Crimea.

Also, most imported medicines need a certificate, which can be three times as expensive as their original cost.

Therefore one of the most important tasks for us now is to get experience on how to process correctly all the paper-work required for importing aid medicines, and we also need to develop a well-established customs-clearance technique for the received aid and the purchased goods.
 

How to help our children?

= A SPECIFIC REQUEST: please help us to receive two second-hand computers that were presented to us by one Austrian firm more than a year ago - they are still being in Austria!

= In May 1999 we organised the first exhibition-and-sale of paintings of the Crimean artists. Many Crimean painters offered us their paintings. Children studying at art studios also participated in this initiative. About 70 canvases were not sold and we have them stored, hoping for more opportunities for a new exhibition or an auction.

= We need to find other possibilities of organising similar exhibitions, auctions, fairs, charity concerts etc.

= Some of the children's mothers are staying with their kids in the department for 7-8 months and many of them can sew, knit, or embroider perfectly well. And these manually created products are so valuable both in our country and abroad!

= Our dream is to create such an "enterprise", a workshop, an artel, which would integrate those parents, whose children are invalids. The profit of that enterprise would go on treatment, support and rehabilitation of the children. Also such an enterprise would allow to solve one more problem. The fathers of children, who are staying in hospital with a leukaemia, are usually torn between work in their own town, search for money for the treatment, and Simferopol - the city where the hospital is located. The parents' artel would enable them to work for it, if they can have an unpaid leave at their principal work.
 

How to help our children?

= Any help - both with ideas and with practical issues - to organise the parents' artel.

It is vital in the very extreme hospital environment to find an escape from severe reality of the child's illness, an application of their feelings and emotions. Our children have classes five days a week with a tutor, who teaches them to draw, construct, and play. Boredom is contra-indicated to our children, as it can kill them in the direct sense of these terrible words...

As a result, our children can earn money for their treatment THEMSELVES. With the help of our tutor, Olga Pavljuchenko, and mothers-enthusiasts they are drawing, embroidering (not only girls, but also boys), beading, making souvenir cards, and working in the genre of paper plastics.

In 2001 some patients of our department became winners and prize winners in the competition of children's art works among children-invalids "It is my world". Soon their works will be displayed at the National Ukrainian competition in Kiev. Works by Michael Norenko, the diploma winner, were highly commended.

We have organised several exhibition-and-sales of our children's art works in the Crimea and Kiev: paintings, works made of beads, embroideries etc. As the experience has shown, this can bring us means for treatment. Therefore we plan to continue this activity.

We take the liberty to claim that our children are capable of performing orders to embroider T-shirts, napkins, special-occasion cards, which will be able to compete with those made in printing houses...

You can have a look at works and paintings by our children.
 

How to help our children?

= Maybe someone has a desire and an opportunity to teach our children any other kind of creative activity?

This is one of the most crucial tasks. As at the moment there is no well-adjusted system of collecting donor blood and delivering it to hospitals on a regular basis, we need to take control over the situation. In particular, among those children who have had leukaemia, there is a very high percentage of children who get infected with various forms of hepatitis during blood transfusion. The only alternative is to have approved and reliable donors within easy reach. We are planning to make a list divided into blood groups and Rhesus factor groups. When we need blood transfusion for a particular child, we can notify efficiently the donors from the respective group by contact phones and provide a successful transfusion.

The Crimean people can help us here!
 

How to help our children?

= Everyone who wants to become a potential donor for our children, can contact us and inform us about their desire.

= Students of higher educational institutions, church communities, enterprises and organizations where the children's parents work can help us considerably.

There are lots of things to be done in the Department of Haematology. And those who can help us with anything will always be welcomed here.
 

How to help our children?

IF YOU HAVE A DESIRE AND ANY IDEAS, PLEASE CONTACT US AT THE FOLLOWING ADDRESS hemato@simfi.net
ACCORDING TO THE SANITARY NORMS, TO BE ABLE TO WORK AS A VOLUNTEER IN THE DEPARTMENT, YOU MUST HAVE A REFERENCE BY AN ORGANIZATION, WHICH IS SUPERVISING THE MEDICAL ESTABLISHMENT - in our case, it is the Parent's Initiative.

We prepare holiday parties all together - children, parents, doctors, nurses and volunteers... The gifts - books, soft toys, sweets, or juices - we either buy them ourselves, or somebody sends them as present to the Department. Usually we are responsible for organising two holidays - the New Year and The Day of a Recovered Child (June, 1). The second holiday is not just a holiday but also a remarkable stimulus for those children who are currently undergoing treatment at the department, as well as for their parents. They can see with their own eyes how many children have conquered the illness. And so can they!

We have actors and performers visiting us at our parties. As a matter of fact our children spend more than half a year inside the walls of our Department and they have a chance to get out of it only when they go home for a couple of days for recovery holidays. Therefore all children, except for those in heavy condition, come to see all puppet shows, even those for babies. If a child has a dropper, a nurse would take out the child together with a dropper into the hall where the show takes place and would stay with the child, checking if the medicine is being supplied. Everyone is particularly happy when clown Toljan, - a talented actor Anatoly Ljadnov, is visiting the Department. After these holidays many kids start getting better. After all, joy and laughter are quite real medicines. It is a pity that leukaemia can not be cured ONLY with THEIR help...
 

How to help our children?

= To perform something very interesting for our children!

Our children realize how close they are to the reality of death. When a child is cut off from the usual life, when his or her socializing is sharply limited to the circle of other small patients, when this child is suffering both from a heavy illness and from severe treatment, such a child needs help and support.

The ethic-psychological work is also strongly needed for the parents, who are falling into depression and for the tired and exhausted doctors, who are experiencing hardest emotional overloads while passing over to children their strength, kindness and confidence and while trying to solve a puzzle - how to treat children if there are no drugs?..

We are very keen to find a good professional psychologist for our Department of Haematology. Of course, not every expert will be capable of doing such specific work. But we do not give up hopes!
 

How to help our children?

= If you have a degree in psychology and experience in working with children, and if you would like to work on a permanent basis with our Department - contact us.

= Or maybe you can provide us with transport to take our children out (those who are allowed!) on an excursion, to the circus, to a cafe etc.

Now every family has to solve these problems independently, all by themselves. And the problems are considerable. The child is still very isolated even when he or she has left hospital. Because of the undermined immune system, the child can not socialize with the peers in full measure or go to school. The child will have to be educated at home; and what is usually poured out in the company of peers, will be poured out in mother and father's company. We need joint efforts and cooperation in this area.
 

How to help our children?

= Somebody needs to work psychologically with these children, to support them during the period of isolation and gradual adaptation to social life, which they have been excluded from for a significant period of time.

With big pleasure we keep in touch with Christian churches, communities and parishes. In our web-site we keep a page of our mission "Overcoming".

We still can not find a priest who would be prepared to come to the Department on a permanent basis to have religious discussions, to give religious lectures and to conduct divine services. However, when the child or the parents make a request, a priest can always be invited to the Department to confess, to administer communion to, or to baptise our children.

For the last few years our Department has been celebrating Christmas and Passover holidays - several Christian non-confessional missions have been helping us with preparations.
 

How to help our children?

We have got our web-site in the Network since February, 1999. You just need to look at it to see what has been done so far. A lot has been done already but there is still a long way to go.

At the moment we have access to the Internet from an internet-cafe, which has invited us after they have read a newspaper article about our children. Only very recently our Department has received a computer. Now we are looking for an Internet-provider, which can provide us with free-of-charge connection - unfortunately we can not afford paying for the connection.

Nowadays it is not only us, parents, but also doctors-haematologists need a reliable and fast connection with the Internet. All International haematological centres, working with BFM-90 protocols and their derivatives, are permanently on-line participating in the web-conference, which enables them not only "to develop the science" but also to save concrete patients in critical condition.

The numerous professional publications, which can be found in the Internet nowadays, are of great importance for doctors, as those publications allow them to constantly improve the methods of treatment, to learn about new medicine, as well as about the recommendations and experiences by other clinics. The doctors, who are treating our children, also need direct access to the Net.
 

How to help our children?

= Banner-exchange systems - with display of our banners on preferential terms.

= EVERYONE WHO WANTS - WITH ANYTHING THEY CAN!!!

This is another large-scale project, which still exists in our dreams only. We would like to have 2-3 computers in the Department and to teach children (as well as their parents) not just to play games, but to work both with office programs and in the Internet. Ideally, we would really want to help the child to be occupied during the period of full and partial isolation and to give the child a profession, which can give an invalid of any grade a chance to fulfil him- or herself in the world.
 

How to help our children?

= To help with practical realization of the skills acquired by our patients.

It is really important for us to break the stereotype that exists in the society regarding the incurability of oncological diseases. "Why helping if these children will die anyways", - unfortunately, we have heard this more than once. And sometimes, when the parents have found out the severe diagnosis, they take the child home - to die, as they are convinced of uselessness of therapy...

Therefore, whenever we have a chance we try to use press, conferences, personal meetings to tell people about successes in modern haematology and in paediatrics in particular. For those who have just been taken to the Department, we have got books and articles, including material for children (for example, the translation of a wonderful brochure by Bernhard Kremens (Germany) "What is a leukaemia"). This is tremendously important considering the condition that both children and their parents are in during the first days after the terrible diagnosis has been made.

The future of oncology is in the successful therapy of a cancer, not in the preventive measures. Every year more children will fall ill with leukaemia, no matter how sad it is. It is crucial for the society to have a profound understanding of the illness and its treatment; so that those who find themselves in this situation, could receive all necessary information immediately - and so that they do not waste any time, which becomes really precious.
 

How to help our children?

= By informing us about any news in our area.

The level of doctors' skills in modern methods of treatment, the modern equipment, the increased level of hospital, mastering new medical technologies - these are all the essential part of the development. Without these aspects the medical process goes nowhere. No development - no life.
 

How to help our children?

= By sponsoring and supporting the participation of doctors of the Haematology Department of the Crimean Regional Children's Hospital in professional conferences, seminars, work and organization of meetings of the Ukrainian Leukaemia Society.

= By target grants for the department to set up a modern laboratory, capable to carry out cytogenetic and immunological researches, and also to introduce the technology for bone marrow transplantation.

= By creating the aid foundation for medical personnel of the Department.

Our children and us appreciate every smile, every kind word.
 

How to help our children?

= Write a letter - to all of us or any child from our patients, that you choose.

= Having read about us, simply wish us to hold on, wish our doctors strength and courage, and wish our children - health, happiness and MANY LONG YEARS OF LIFE. This standard wish has its primary, live and very important meaning!